Gaming

October 16, 2011 – 8:47 pm

Star Trek,

So after an aborted attempt to start a Star Trek RPG set in the post reboot world I rebooted the reboot campaign, but it has become somewhat obvious that our glorious leader isn't cut out to command the USS Illyad and we'll be hunting for a new captain in the next episode. I'm sure we'll find someone suitable, and Captain Butcher will find himself having a fine new position in an office somewhere back on Earth.

 

Hard Nova,

I have a new lease of life for this campaign planned, having booted what was going on at the end of the last arc, Captain Shepherd and the blob monster have managed to lay the seeds of rebellion in the Westron Combine with the dominant corporation left having to fight a now well trained army and well armed using their Blue Sun allies. The enemy beyond the darkness of space has been slowed but should not be forgotten and the Earth Empress is looking to her agents to destabilize the old Empire as soon as possible.

 

Ingenium,

Another game that I need to reboot, it seems to have managed to get itself stuck beneath a wildfire of new ideas and I'd quite like to get this one running again. The players have many monsters to face and powerful items to recover so it's best that we get it all underway as soon as possible or else it'll get lost again.

 

Other Games,

Other games that are important at the moments are the Dune campaign that hasn't really gotten going yet and a horror game based around Cthulhu that I'm yet to get to grips with, I have a desire to put together a dark sci-fi game where the players are agents in a secret but official organisation tasked with preventing incursions into real space by other worldly horrors, probably under the auspice of the Royal Society for Occult Studies. However at the same time I'm still drawn to the classic style of a bunch of hapless individuals sucked into the alternate reality.

There is another set of game themes that interest me at the moment but implementation and execution have failed to materialise so they're sitting in a mental draw waiting for an opportunity.

 

The Problem,

One of the main issues I have at the moment is an awful lot of ideas but not very much in the way of opportunity, I think pehaps I should start looking for a more organized way of doing things, maybe make a calendar and have everyone put down what dates they're free for games?

Another thing I've been thinking of trying is gaming over a voip service, I'm not sure how it would go mind you but it seems to me that it should be functional. That could open up a lot more opportunities to play games and there fore reduce the problem of games getting lost over time, and more opportunity for others to ref things.

Anyway I'm going to play some nuclear dawn now and ponder on these issues.

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A new season

October 13, 2011 – 9:50 pm

A new anime season, and weirdly it's quite good;

 

Let's start off with the obvious;

Working!!

Second season of Working! It's started off just as funny as the first and just as high quality, this is a show to sit back and enjoy on a Sunday afternoon without a doubt.

 

Next Persona 4

Based on the simply fantastic part rpg part random dungeon crawler part dating sim game that I love, even though I am yet to complete one. The anime so far seems pretty close to the game, which I'm replaying with the goal of finishing it before the anime tells me the ending olol. Anyway it looks great and has kept the music from the games.

Now all the anime I thought would suck.

C3

This was what I was expecting to be a dull little ecchi affair about a loli who'se also a box, unfortunatly when I thik of magic boxes I can only think of hellraiser. This though living up to my delicious desire for shinpan failed to be boring or rubbish, which was the begining of a bad trend as I look for a show that sucked. The show has quality animation, and it's amusing enough even if it's cliche, the end of the second episode is when it gets interetsting. Low censorship.

Also I really like this op… The song has that great rising vocal thing that I love in a track.

Mekan-Ki

This is probably the most living up to my "rubbish geneirc ecchi harem" hunt, however it fails to be bad enough to really get up there and I may actually finish it. Boy joins co-ed school from an all boy school, turns out it's a dodgy school dedicated to elemental combat of some sort child hood friend / fiance / rival set up. Low censorship.

This is a show that I have a 50/50 chance of forgetting.

Fate/Zero

I feel compelled to watch it just so I understand the things Cereal says and weird in jokes I don't get otherwise. This is a miserable little decent into "can we get our show banned from tv" and all I have learnt is that loli likes rape insects and dodgy cthulhu quoting priest likes to wait until a target has completly collapsed into despair before shreadding it with tenticals.

Nice sounding op though, again it has that raising lyrics thing I like. Saddly no op with visuals o.O

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

Right, I thought I was onto a winner when I saw the intro for this on anidb.info, but no. A half English half Jaanese guy joins school and everyones scared of him becouse he's got blond hair so they think he's a delinquent. He meets a girl talking to her imaginary friend. May be leader for most fun sounding op. Anyway they decide to make a club to make friends. I say they, I mean she. Oh and the first episode was nowhere near as ecchi as I was expecting.

 

Ben-To

What the fuck! Super Market Sweep on crack.Set around the sterotypical manic moment when a store cuts stuff to half price at the end of the day and everyone battles for it.

This show looks very pretty. But it's completly off the wall and reminds me of equal parts koi hime that random battling girl ova I saw once and something i just forgot.

I really like the ed for this but can't find it.

 

 

Anyway that's enough for now.

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Just an update to say nothing

September 7, 2011 – 10:43 pm

Errr there was actually a post here but word press appears to have eaten it, oh well it wasn't important.

 

So something like, this anim season sucks, the only thing worth watching is Kamisama no memo chou, settled for watching HD Uncut versions of High school of the dead and Railgun, also enjoyed watching Redline a pretty awesome sci fi racer that reminded me of wacky races.

Had a good time playing macross the other weekend.

Watched game of thrones then read the books, Arya is the best, Jon's story is at least interesting, Tyrion is great, Jamie gets interesting and, Sansa is terrible, Bran is boring too.

Started a birthright forum game which is slow getting started but it's coming along nicely I think. http://birthrightrpg.forumotion.co.uk/

I didn't get my second beer at the maid cafe.

mmmm I think that's about it, ayacon was fun, men should be allowed to wear skirts more often, the new smileage line up sucks, I'm liking kpop more and more, AKB48 have crazy sales figures, and I want more free booze.

And that is all.

 

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Maids of England ~ Maid Cassis ~ Maid RPG

July 21, 2011 – 6:05 pm

So, we've seen Maid Ren, now for Maid Cassis.

p.s. Character only based on maid persona, and only the persona bits that I've witnessed.

Maid Cassis

Maid Cassis is the Head Maid, a steely warden of Maid Virtue and service, though she is dismissive, bossy and more than a little bit Tsundere. She is sworn rival to Maid Suu and almost a polar opposite, whilst Maid Suu is forever genki and more than a little bit clumsy (more than one master has been subject to unfortunate spillage) Maid Cassis though is always on hand to smooth the wrinkles and put things back in order. Her personality led her to join the school archery club, a fitting role for a future school council president in her second year she became team captain and secured a senior position on the student council, a stepping stone to her post as student president.

Character Sheet

Maid Type : Cool / Heroine

Maid Colours : Purple / White

Maid Roots – Hereditery Maid – her parents were maids to the lords and ladies of England, and their parents before them, Maid Cassis is devoted to her role.

Stress Explosion – (what you do when the other maids or bad guys wind you up) Rampage – you grab the closest item and go on and insane rampage wrecking things in the mansion, throwing things at the other maids (including one unfortunate occasion with Butler Kouhei, it took hours to get him down from the chandelier)

Maid Weapon – Long Bow – Generally deployed to Keep Maid Suu and her rabble in order but occasionally deployed to fend off threats to her Lords and Ladies.

Special Qualities

Glasses – adding to her sophisticated and serious demeanor, however if she ever takes them off, look out!

Bad Expression – she always looks prepared to kick ass and take names.

Rival – Maid Suu, the two are forever dueling for the Lords and Ladies attention.

Dark Past – Former Delinquent – in her hay day she was known as a troublemaker and rabble rouser, on more than one occasion a confrontation has been solved with the arrival of a gang of bike riding yankees worshipping her as their former boss and begging her to return.

Attributes

Athletics : 2

Affection : 2

Skill : 3

Cunning : 3

Luck : 2

Will : 3

Favour – 2

Spirit – 30

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The woes of a new season

July 19, 2011 – 11:10 pm

So a new season of anime has begun, and I must say it's the worst season in some time, it has a single gem in Kamisama no memo chou which is very good so far, a possible good show in Kamisama Dolls, and a note worthy sequel in baka no test. Yuruyuri isn't bad, but suffers from the main problem all 4 panel manga anime adaptations have suffered from since azumanga and that is that it's designed for lolicon otaku. Not a terrible thing but it does get a bit trying at times. Everything else this season looks pretty shit, No, 6 looked okay until I realized it was a yaoi based show. There are still a few more things yet to air such as the new series of Last Exile which I look forward too.

 

RANT

To make matters worse, anime on demand has been fucking everythign upwith their retarded poorly conceived sabotage of high quality streams from Crunchyroll. Up until those faggots turned up we could pay our £5 and watch most of the anime released in a season perfectly legally, but now these twats have turned up and over paid to get exclusive rights to show some shows in the UK, so if you want to watch all the shows you want you have to pay £5 for Cruncyroll and however much the shit eaters over at AOD want to charge. Well they can fuck off. I pay my Crunchyroll subscription so I'll take what I paid for. What's worse is that AOD have the shittest web site design in the world, they havn't even bothered with their own content system, you can't find anything, their stream quality is appauling (like early youtube style), their 720p stream is hideous (hey we only have 2 kinds of black) and worst of all, they don't fucking simulcast! Seriously close down you French bastards! If you want to set up get rights along with Crunchy and if you provide a better service anyone wants then you can compete with crunchyroll, but as it is you're just a bunch of cunts.

END RANT

 

Exciting things, Ashen Star Final PDF was released, Here it looks great and one day I may even play it!

More exciting, the guy that translated Maid RPG has released his 3rd draft of Magical Burst the dark magical girl RPG – Magical Burst

Also the same guy has made an interesting add on for most rpg's to create social links and back grounds for characters where the game itself doesn't support them. The method looks really interesting and I'll have to set about using it for something (maybe a macross style campaign or the streets game I've been putting together?)  Entagelments

Anyway, that's all for now.

 

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Maids of England ~ Maid Ren ~ Maid RPG

June 29, 2011 – 9:28 pm

So I was at a maid cafe and failed at making a maid character for Maid Ren, so here we go -

 

Maid Ren, the Always serious steady character of the group while Maid Suu is bouncing off the walls and Maid Cassis Tsundere antics forever telling them all off for not doing a good job or Maid Rini forever lost in the clouds. Maid Ren attends Doki Doki High along with Maid Suu and Maid Ai, Maid Ren is a star on the track team but comes across as a little unapproachable, she's got many admirers including a number of the junior girls which see is not entirely pleased about – but she copes in her normal steady manner, and her admirers do tend to be a bit too scared to approach her.

 

Character Sheet

Maid Type : Cool / Boyish

Maid Colours : Red / Red

Maid Roots – Business – being a maid makes ends meet and lets you patch up the hole in the floor and cover the leaks in the roof.

Stress Explosion – (what you do when the other maids or bad guys wind you up) Seclusion – you go to your room and refuse to come out, not even for food.

Maid Weapon – Summoning, you can summon beasts and spirits that settle your scores.

Special Qualities

Quiet – You have a cool, subtle demeanor.

Uniform – You wear a pair of white trainers and high socks, all the better for chasing people that threaten your master

Bad Expression – You permanently look annoyed / disinterested making first meetings difficult (however it's also a charm point)

Membership – Shadow Clan – A member of a secret order of assassins that have existed through the ageas.

Attributes

Athletics : 3

Affection : 1

Skill : 2

Cunning : 2

Luck : 1

Will : 3

 

Favour – 2

Spirit – 30

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Stuff Coming

June 21, 2011 – 10:33 pm

I've got two brief posts coming up, one will cover trail of cthulhu and Kara no Shoujo, the other will cover anime. The anime one will likely have some talk of events and shit I've visited of late.

 

Till then.

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A brief tool

May 19, 2011 – 7:56 pm

A quick template for creating outlines for generic adventures, in this case ingenium (of course), I'm going to look at a horror game in a little bit based on gumshoe inspired by what little I've read about the game engine behind Kara no Shoujo this has me chomping at the bit for something interesting.

 

I'm also on a run of good luck as my main two players have decided to give reffing a shot, which is cool as it means I get to play, though both are playing fantasy settings, one is planescape which has always intrigued me and the other is ars magica, which is a game I enjoyed in my youth.

 

The Scenario Planner

Basically most scenarios need an intro, a hoped for ending and some twists between the two, also there should be some idea of encounters and clues that link the start to the end. I'm sure everyone has a planner of some sort even if it isn't structured I'm going to upload the one I'm currently using a long with a rough outline for a scenario.

Border Troubles

Ingenium Adventure Outline Template

 

 

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Ingenium again

May 4, 2011 – 11:31 pm

So anyway, an NPC from my current campaign,

 

Emery

Inquisitor of the Everlasting Order

 

Description

Straight black hair with a single front plat framing a pale white face, purple eyes gaze silently out of lazy lidded eyes,  her deep crimson coloured lips need no decoration.

 

When within the safety of cities and taverns she wears her long robe like dress over a short skirt knee high white stockings and white boots. Her robe is decorated with arcane writings, covers her arms and her sleeves flare out over her gloved hands, the robe is split from just below her right hip allowing her to move gracefully through courts and battlefields alike.

 

When outside of the safety of her city walls she wears the same robe but underneath she wears leather trousers and a chain mail shirt.

History

Emery was raised in a military orphanage in Innmouth her father was a lieutenant in the Saail army and died in the battle of Kivaar against the armies of Ling in the three year war. Her mother was a warlock who died in a border incident shortly after the war. Her talent in magic and stealth were spotted by a visiting member of the order and she was quickly purchased from the orphanage and spent the following decade under the harsh tutelage of the orders priests and acolytes. This is her first assignment outside of confines of the order and is on the one hand naïve, but on the other hand she is a vicious efficient killer, dedicated to her faith and strengthening her nation.

 

Level 2

Race Tainted Human

Class Inquisitor

Trait Intuitive

 

Attributes

Awareness

2

Intelligence

1

Dexterity

4

Phys Strength

1

Willpower

1

Endurance

1

Appearance

1

Charisma

1

Magical Aptitude

3

General Talants

Armour Use: Medium, Weapon Use: Heavy, Armour Use: Light, Mana Tuned

Talent Pool

Shadow

Mirror Spirit 4, Lock-picking 1, Juggling 1, Shadow’s stealth 2, Hidden Motive 2, Quickfooted 1

Spell

Shadows

Deepen Shadow

Life

Mend

Poison

Contagion

 

The World

These are the framing notes for a handful of the kingdoms in my campaign world.

The Kingdom of Saail

Situated on the southern coast of the continent, the kingdom is poor and over stretched ruled by King Shion he is well liked by the people but is viewed as an ignoble start up by the nobles and feudal lords that rule the lands. The king’s influence spreads little beyond the capital and even his hold there is tenuous.

 

Empire of Ling

North of Saail is Ling, it is comparatively powerful but tormented by barbarian raiders from the north and constantly at odds with Shin Matsumi to the east. It is ruled by Emperor Klein, an accomplished military strategist and proven diplomat, Klein is imposing, however his grasp on domestic matters is poor and he leaves these to the Empress Miya a soft spoken woman of substantial wisdom.

 

Duchy of Ren

The Duchy is a vassal of Saail, Duke Blay is a close friend of King Shion, they spent many years together in the academy of Nollebourg .

 

Province of Siralon

An independent province ruled by a council of elected representatives, its people are strong and capable fighters as they have had to fend off multiple invasions from Ling, Barbarians and, Saail. The province was originally part of Ling but it broke away fifty years ago.

 

Shin Matsumi

A shadowy state in the east, it focuses on strict rule and a powerful administrative body, the Emperor is a shrewd politician but the Empires strongest card is its professional army backed by capable secret service.

 

Narak

Narak is ruled by an undead lord, originally these were the nations of Sang and Kor, however when the monster army marched out of the mountains neither could stand. The world readied for an onslaught however the undead swarm stopped and has been silent within the borders of Narak, the small nations surrounding it can see the smoke from the smiths of Narak and the scent of death in the air.

 

Surbery

A kingdom that focuses on naval power and trade, it has tense relations with its northern neighbour. Its King is an adept mage and the he has created many towers dedicated to magic and the mastery of the sea.

 

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Things of Note,

May 4, 2011 – 10:28 pm

Kpop

So of late I have been death looping Peekaboo from JQT, it's odd that I've been listening to far more kpop at work of late, though I haven't loaded any hardcore onto my mp3 player yet. Anyway, enjoy, these girls are very pretty.

 

 

Eclipse Phase

Of late I've been wasting yet more good money on roleplaying games, some from my past, Fading Suns and others new, Eclipse Phase, and it's the new I'd like to mention a few words about, as a game world it sets up some very interesting ideas and plot hooks. Humanity has been devastated by a war with its AI's, strong hints that the truth behind the AI actions is not as simple as it has been told. Giant jump gates, or Pandora gates as they're called were constructed by the AI's and the stars beyond offer great wonders. Alien emissaries have arrived, they travel across the stars and shun the technology of the Pandora gate, they delivered two instructions for humanity, first do not use Pandora gates and, the second is not to create self aware AI. A strange plague also hangs in the air converting organic and machine alike.

Those are the metaplot things hanging around in the back story. The really interesting aspect of the game is that humanity has transcended their physical forms and have become immortal, in some ways at least, they can store their consciousness and transfer it to new forms, unfortunately when the Earth was destroyed many of these consciousness were vacuumed up by the AI's, many others were destroyed by viruses and nano swarms. Billions died and those that managed to flee found themselves without bodies, trapped as infomorphs or in artificial bodies of bots. This idea of being able to upload yourself and go from form to form is very interesting from a philosophical point of view, as well as the idea of restoring back ups of yourself when you are destroyed. Also the idea of forking, where multiple copies of yourself can be loaded into multiple bodies?? If that isn't a recipe for fascinating conspiracies I don't know what is.

It also raises interesting ideas about privacy, personality, identity and, society.

Magical Burst

Some time ago the second revision of Magical Burst came out, this is a happy time, the very best thing about it is the inclusion of random generation tables meaning a character can be created in a few dice rolls add that pick up and play ability we all loved so much in Maid RPG. I really look forward to seeing this game in its final form, as it is it's already looking very good and I'm awaiting the opportunity to play it. Some of the random mutations don't sit well wit me if I were to be playing it as a serious game but they would suit a more comedic setting, other than that and that I'm yet to really figure out a way to run a campaign. But no matter, it'll no doubt be very interesting.

Anyway that's all for now, I'm also reading Apocolypse Cthulhu an exciting Trail of Cthulhu campaign, and I just bought Ashen Stars, another Pelgrane Press game based around the Gumshoe rule set.

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